Issue No. 18, Autumn 2016

They say she was a hunter
they say she strode the plains
bridle in hand,
eyes ever on the skies

Her quarry often outpaced her
but still
once every month she swung
her lasso of twisted silver light
and found it catch

How she pulled
and was pulled,
boots digging into the earth,
throwing up clods,
scoring canyons

Her whoops drove through chasms,
startled vultures into feather-loosing frenzies,
toppled hoodoos,
vibrated the vacant skulls
of ghost-cows in the sands

At last she cornered that ornery prey,
forced it to submission,
white sides heaving,
hoofs stamping grooves
into the heavens
Up she swung onto its back
and oh, how she rode

plunging through the star-plains,
scattering the silver herds,
mermaid-hair streaming through the void,
while her wild mount bucked
and reared, fierce as ocean,
colliding with comets.

Finally thrown, hurtled down
the black acres of air,
she dusted herself off.
Maybe she drank up a river or two
before her boots wandered her westward.
She lifted her eyes,
spied far off the silver flanks
of that wild dappled stallion

and, lasso twirling,
haloing the sage,
resumed the hunt once more

Sandi Leibowitz is a school librarian, classical singer and writer of speculative poetry and fiction. Her work appears in Mythic Delirium, Mithila Review, Metaphorosis, Through the Gate and other magazines and anthologies. Her poems have been nominated for the Rhysling, Dwarf Star, Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net awards, and appear on editors’ lists of recommended reading. As a child she galloped through the apartment to the William Tell Overture, tossing her mane, but never did manage to lasso the moon. She lives in New York City in a ravens’ wood, next door to bogles.